David Seymour’s Crying Baby

David Seymour sure is a whiney wet fish when he comes out to defend his precious little charter schools.

This came about as a charter school approached a nearby state school (after potentially pinching some of their kids so they could open) and asked to use their science laboratories (Essentially they just want the fume hoods, but lets face it, you’re going to end up using the whole space, not just the fume hood!).

While the school agreed out of good will, they were quickly advised by the Secondary school union ‘PPTA’, that any such arrangement with charter schools was something that was discussed and would not be entered into by state schools.

In steps David Seymour to fling dirt on the PPTA and try to undermine the PPTA’s credibility.

Unfortunately (for him at least) he’s come out like a pathetic parent who has no spine “Oh pretty please stop picking on my little child. Okay, well, maybe instead of punching and kicking it, you could just punch it. Okay, but just one kick.”.

“I think the critical thing here is that we’ve said for a long time there’s an orchestrated bullying campaign from the PPTA towards partnership schools – and it’s been particularly strong in Northland. It’s never been documented like this, it’s never been explicit.”

He said there was a “relentless, and frankly insidious campaign” to make life uncomfortable for charter schools.

“But what I would say is that all good, hard working teachers up and down the country might want to ask themselves if they want to be a member of an organisation that puts ideology ahead of kids like this. ”

As both the PPTA and the Labour leader point out, Charter Schools get much more funding than state schools could ever hope for.

“Labour leader Andrew Little says there is a legitimate question about whether charter schools should be getting help from state schools.
Especially when charter schools have roughly five times more funding for each student than state schools.
Mr Little says most people would say that’s pretty rough when state schools’ operational funding is being frozen.” – TVNZ

“Roberts rejected Seymour’s comments.

“I think it’s a bit cheeky to expect the state system to prop them up even more than they are already.

“So our members have been very clear from the outset that charter schools – because of the way they pull resourcing away from state schools, and they make vulnerable schools and communities even more vulnerable – that we don’t support them.

“We will not prop them up because our commitment is to the students in the state system,” she said.

Roberts said a fume cupboard cost around a $15,000 – “I’m pretty sure that if they’re really careful about the way they cut their costs, they’ll be able to find the resourcing for it”.

“My understanding is Mr Seymour thinks we’ve pulled out the big guns and gone up there to try and bully them, but actually I met with my members, which I’m more than entitled to do, and we’ve done this on more than one occasion.

“I guess the issue is more broadly, charter schools have got the luxury of just thinking about the kids in their school, but we’ve got a commitment to all of the kids in the system.” – Stuff

Unleash Education

Thanks for visiting Unleash Education. We hope you've enjoyed your visit.
Please visit our social media pages on Twitter and Facebook, as well as bookmarking this page.
If you would like to be a part of the team, please get in touch with us.